114
It is a very curious trait. I used to refuse, sometimes under embarrassing pressure, to taste things 
whose appearance or whose name displeased me. I would not eat jam, even as a child, because it 
looked messy. I must have been nearly forty before I would touch salad. It seems absurd. I was very 
bond of lobster mayonnaise; but lobster salad, never! I dislike the combination of consonants. The 
word suggests something indefinite. It gives the effect of French poetry, where the absence of 
accentuation emasculates the rhythm. 
I found myself spiritually at home with Mexicans. The despise industry and commerce. They had 
Diaz to do their political thinking for them and damned well he did it. Their hearts are set on bull 
fighting, cock fighting, gambling and lechery. Their spirit is brave and buoyant; it had not been 
poisoned by hypocrisy and the struggle for life. I hired part of a house overlooking the Alameda, a 
magnificent park intended for pleasure and protected from the police. I engaged a young Indian girl 
to look after me and settled down to steady work at Magick. I had an introduction to an old man 
named Don Jesus Medina, a descendant of the great duke of Armada fame, and one of the highest 
chiefs of Scottish 
{202} 
rite free-masonry. My Cabbalistic knowledge being already profound by current standards, he 
thought me worthy of the highest initiation in his power to confer; special powers were obtained in 
view of my limited sojourn, and I was pushed rapidly through and admitted to the thirty-third and 
last degree before I left the country. 
I had also a certain amount of latitude granted by Mathers to initiate suitable people in partibus. I, 
therefore, established an entirely new Order of my own, called L.I.L.: the "Lamp of the Invisible 
Light". Don Jesus became its first High Priest. In the Order L.I.L., the letters L.P.D. are the 
monograms of the mysteries. An explanation of these letter is given by Dumas in the prologue of his 
Memoirs of a Physician, and Eliphas Lévi discusses them at some length. I, however, remembered 
them directly from my incarnation as Cagliostro. It would be improper to communicate their 
significance to the profane, but I may say that the political interpretation given by Dumas is 
superficial, and the ethical suggestions of Lévi puerile and perverse; or, more correctly, 
intentionally misleading. They conceal a number of magical formulae of minor importance by major 
practical value, and the curious should conduct such research as they feel impelled to make in the 
light of the Cabbala. Their numerical values, Yetziratic attributions, and the arcana of the Atus of 
Tahuti, supply an adequate clue to such intelligences as are enlightened by sympathy and sincerity. 
The general idea was to have an ever-burning lamp in a temple furnished with talismans appropriate 
to the elemental, planetary and zodiacal forces of nature. Daily invocations were to be performed 
with the object of making the light itself a consecrated centre or focus of spiritual energy. This 
light would then radiate and automatically enlighten such minds as were ready to receive it. 
Even today, the experiment seems to me interesting and the conception sublime. I am rather sorry 
that I lost touch with don Jesus; I should like very much to know how it turned out. 
I devoted practically my whole time to this and other magical work. I devised a Ritual of Self-
Initiation (see The Equinox, vol. I, no. III, p.269), the essential feature of which is the working up of 
spiritual enthusiasm by means of a magical dance. This dance contained the secret gestures of my 
grade, combined with the corresponding words. I used to set my will against the tendency to 
giddiness and thus postpone as long as possible the final physical intoxication. In this way I lost 
consciousness at a moment when I was wholly absorbed in aspiration. Thus, instead of falling into 
dull darkness, I emerged into a lucid state, in which I was purged of personality and all sensory or 
intellectual impressions. I became the vehicle of the divine forces invoked and so experienced 
Godhead. My results were satisfactory so far as they went; but they did not aid my personal 
progress very much, 
{203} 
since I had not formulated an intellectual link between the divine and human consciousness.